Mick Harvey – Four Acts of Love (Mute)
An album released earlier in the year which has appropriately (given the artist involved) burned its way slowly into my consciousness. Mick Harvey is a name half-known to many people, here’s a good recap from a Pitchfork review recently. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18170-mick-harvey-four-acts-of-love/ Pinpointing Mick Harvey’s identity as a musician has always required a little triangulation. Of his three main points of reference, the closest is Nick Cave, whom Harvey played with in their fledgling band Boys Next Door, then the Birthday Party, and on to the Bad Seeds-- whose primal menace and eerie tenderness Harvey added to immeasurably. Harvey also spent years in Simon Bonney’s collective Crime and the City Solution; by the 90s he’d added a third coordinate, French pop legend Serge Gainsbourg, the source of material for his first two solo albums, 1995’s Intoxicated Man and 1997’s Pink Elephants, the latter of which dared to offer a single Harvey composition. When Harv...